The present invention is directed to user interfaces for data processing systems. It finds particular, although not exclusive, use in data processing systems used for complex simulations.
The capabilities of data processing systems have greatly advanced over the past several decades, and the amount of information that they can produce has similarly expanded. But the usefulness of the resulting information can depend to some degree on the ease with which the user can locate desired information in the mass of information that results.
Among the areas in which this is particularly true is that of simulation. Computer simulations have been employed on a wide variety of systems, such as electronic circuits, weather patterns, national economies, and manufacturing plants. All simulations depend on models, i.e., statements of relationships among the variables employed in the simulation. Once a model has been written, the data processing system performs the actual simulation; it computes series of values of the simulation variables as functions of an independent variable, typically time.
One obvious reason for performing a simulation is simply to predict performance, i.e., to answer questions such as, What will XYZ Corporation's revenues be for the next 18 months? In this case, the variable of interest is revenues while the independent variable is time.
But a simulation often is used not simply to determine what a result will be but also to determine why the results are what they are and, generally, to obtain insight into the operation of the simulated system. For these purposes, the user often must investigate values of variables other than those of a small number of ultimate result variables. This in turn requires that the user determine which of the possibly thousands of variables he should inspect. These questions require the insight of the human user and often a significant level of concentration, which may not be achievable if too much of the user's attention must be devoted to the mechanics of the interface between the user and the data processing system.